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Legend[edit]

Sir Bevis of Hampton is one of the most well-known Middle English romances. Bevis of Hampton (c. 1324) contains many themes common to that genre: a hero whose exploits take him from callow youth to hard-won maturity ending with a serene and almost sanctified death. Supporting him are a resourceful, appealing heroine and faithful servants set against dynastic intrigue, a parade of interesting villains, foreign and domestic. The plot has a geographical sweep which moves back and forth from England to the Near East and through most of western Europe replete with battles against dragons and giants. Forced marriages, episodes of domestic violence, a myriad of disguises and mistaken identities, harsh imprisonments with dramatic escapes, harrowing rescues, and violent urban warfare fill out the protagonist's experiences. Last but not least, the has a horse of such valor that the horse's death at the end of the poem is at least as tragic as that of the heroine, and almost as tragic as that of Bevis himself. Not surprisingly though, this much variety makes the poem a difficult one to characterize with any degree of certainty, and several other factors make it a poem which is perhaps easier to enjoy than to evaluate accurately.

Bevis is the son of Man, the count of Hampton (Southampton), and Man's young wife, is a daughter of the King of Scotland. Discontented with her marriage, Bevis's mother asks a former suitor, Doon or Devoun, emperor of Almaine (Germany), to send an army to murder Man in a forest. The plot succeeds and the countess marries Doon. Threatened with future vengeance by her ten-year-old son, she determines to do away with him also, but Bevis is saved from death by a faithful tutor.

Bevis is subsequently sold to pirates and ends up at the court of King Hermin, whose realm is variously placed in Egypt and Armenia. The legend continues to relate the exploits of Bevis, his defeat of Ascapart, his love for the king's daughter Josiane, his mission to King Bradmond of Damascus with a sealed letter demanding his own death, his imprisonment and his final vengeance on his stepfather. After succeeding in claiming his inheritance Bevis is, however, driven into exile and separated from Josiane, to whom he is reunited only after each of them has contracted, in form only, a second union. The story also relates the hero's death and the fortunes of his two sons.[3]

Texts[edit]

The oldest version known, Boeve de Haumtone, is an Anglo-Norman text that dates back to the first half of the 13th century. It consists of 3,850 verses written in Alexandrines.[2]

The English metrical romance, Sir Beues of Hamtoun (see Matter of England[5]), is founded based on some French origins, varying slightly from those that have been preserved. The oldest manuscript dates from the beginning of the 14th century.[3] A translation into Irish survives in a 15th-century manuscript.[6]

The printed editions of the story were most numerous in Italy, where Bovo or Buovo d'Antona was the subject of more than one poem, and the tale was interpolated in the Reali di Francia, the Italian compilation of Carolingian legend.[3]

From Italian, it passed into Yiddish, where the Bovo-Bukh became the first non-religious book to be printed in Yiddish. The most popular and critically honored Yiddish-language chivalry romance.

In Russia, the romance attained an unparalleled popularity and became a part of Russian folklore. The Russian rendition of the romance appeared in mid-16th century, translated from a Polish or Old Belarusian version, which were in turn, translated from a Serbo-Croatian rendition of the Italian romance, made in Ragusa. The resulting narrative, called Повесть о Бове-королевиче (Povest' o Bove-koroleviche, lit. The Story of Prince Bova), gradually merged with Russian folktales, and the principal character attained many features of a Russian folk hero (bogatyr). Since the 18th century until 1918, various versions of the Povest' had been widely circulated (particularly among the lower classes) as a lubok. Such writers as Derzhavin and Pushkin praised Bova's literary value. The latter used some elements of the Povest' in his fairy tales and attempted to write a fantasy poem based on the romance. Pushkin also praised a version of Bova by Alexander Radish chev, written in 1799.

Sources[edit]

R. Zenker (Boeve-Amlethus, Berlin and Leipzig, 1904) established a close parallel between Bevis and the Hamlet legend as related by Saxo Grammaticus in the Historia Danica. Among more obvious coincidences that point to a common source are the vengeance taken on a stepfather for a father's death, the letter bearing his own death-warrant, which is entrusted to the hero, and his double marriage. The motive of the feigned madness is, however, lacking in Bevis. The princess who is Josiane's rival is less ferocious than the Hermuthruda of the Hamlet legend, but she threatens Bevis with death if he refuses her. Both seem modeled on the type of Thyrdo of the Beowulf legend. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica characterizes the mooted etymology connecting Bevis (Boeve) with Béowa (Beowulf), on the ground that both were dragon slayers, as "fanciful" and "inadmissible". One alternative theory is that Doon may be identified with the emperor Otto the Great, who was the contemporary of Edgar the Peaceful, the English king Edgar of the story.[3]

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